


every monday wednesday and friday, 9am

by Lassie



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, X-Men (Movies)
Genre: College AU, M/M, Not overly romantic, erik's kind of an asshole but what else is new
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-01
Updated: 2015-05-01
Packaged: 2018-03-26 15:29:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3855730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lassie/pseuds/Lassie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So it might’ve been an intro course. It might’ve also been one of the easier ones the university offered. But it was still a required course and Charles was going to take this seriously, goddamn it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	every monday wednesday and friday, 9am

**Author's Note:**

> Based off the prompt: I take my grades very seriously and you’re the lazy asshole who asks a ton of off-topic questions to distract the professor and I might be a foot shorter than you but I swear to god I’ll fight you AU

**Day 1**  
Syllabus week. Charles’s first semester. His first class was called Introduction to Scientific Problem-Solving. He was a little miffed that he had to take such a low-level course, but the school cared more about his money than his high school credits. Whatever. He was going to give it just as much attention as BIO 236 (which he may or may not have already read the textbook for).

Since the university had to accommodate every freshman, it split the class up into smaller groups of about thirty students. Charles’s group was in a random room on the fourth floor of the psychology building. As the professor walked in, Charles watched in dread. The guy was impeccably dressed, walked with quick, measured steps, and had the expression of a man in the finals of a taxidermy competition.

9am and the professor started going over the syllabus. Charles hadn't read it yet—this was supposed to be the easy course. Everyone said it was a joke, right? But for whatever reason, it was quickly looking like this class was going to take up most of his free time for the foreseeable future.

You see, Professor Adams was getting mad that people weren't taking his class seriously and he decided to take out his anger on the newest crop of poor, innocent freshmen. Of course he had selected the worst possible professor (he made a mental promise to visit that rate-my-professor website before selecting classes for spring semester—if he survived this class, that is).

As Adams spoke—he had this long, rambling way of talking that took twelve years to reach a point—Charles sank further and further into his seat. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for the rest of the semester at 9am, Charles would be entering hell.

Adams had decided that the textbook was bullshit, that he would be teaching the class _his_ way because he was obviously the foremost expert in problem-solving. So everything depended on his lectures. To make sure that the students were suffering through lecture (deciphering his roundabout bullshit promised to be an exercise in problem-solving itself), he was going to have clicker quizzes at the end of every class on the past forty-five minutes’ material. (Charles learned that a clicker was a grey hunk of plastic about the size and shape of a cheap calculator…if cheap calculators cost $50.)

Now, the logical thing to do would be to delay the guy so that he didn’t have a chance to cover that much material. Except the downfall to that strategy was that he created the quiz before the beginning of each class and if he didn’t reach a certain arbitrary point, the class was fucked.

**Day 2**  
It quickly became clear that Erik Lehnsherr didn’t give a shit. Five minutes into Adams’s spiel, he raised his hand. The professor brought his current string of bullshit to a halt in the manner of someone trying to stop a rockslide with a volleyball net. “Yes, Mr…?”

“Erik. So I was wondering what constitutes a ‘problem’.” The guy didn’t even try to hide his smirk as Charles silently seethed into his notebook.

“What do you mean?” Adams asked.

“So the class is Introduction to Scientific Problem-Solving, right? What are these problems that we’re solving? Like…is it a math problem? Or are we going to tackle global warming or something?”

Adams spent the rest of the class defining the word ‘problem’. His explanation overlapped itself so many times, but he still managed to say absolutely nothing of significance. Thank god his planned lecture had been about the scientific method because Charles would have committed murder if the quiz had covered one of Adams’s ‘original’ ideas.

**Day 3**  
It was a Friday. Charles’s other classes had gone great. He just needed to get through this class so that he could work on his Calc 3 homework a little bit before Physics.

9am. He watched Erik walk—actually no, that asshole was sauntering—into class, plop down at the desk right next to Charles. He’d originally sat across the room, but at this point in the semester, unassigned seats hadn’t been cemented yet and it was as though he’d been drawn there by Charles’s anger. Charles did his best to ignore him, though it was tough. Sometimes—mostly when Erik wasn’t speaking—he was actually sort of attracted to the jerk. _Shut up,_ Charles told his brain. Charles’s brain proceeded to remind him of Erik’s jawline.

Charles focused his glare on Professor Adams. Only three days in and he didn’t care that he was openly glaring at the guy. It was some small comfort that he wasn’t alone. The entire class wore pretty much the same expression.

The second the professor opened his mouth, Charles gritted his teeth. He wished with all his heart that he could just drop this class—at least five other students already had—but his spring schedule was already going to be packed and all of the other sections were already full. _I only have to come here forty-two more times,_ he mentally sighed.

Ten minutes in, there was movement out of the corner of his eye. Erik’s hand had gone up. No. No no no no—

“Yes, Evan?”

“It’s Erik, actually,” the piece of shit said smoothly, grinning like a shark. “So I was just wondering…” (No no no _no!_ ) “What were the specific faults with the textbook’s philosophy that inspired you to deviate from it in this situation?”

The resulting tangent spanned the rest of the class. Once again, Adams failed to cover anything of value. He disparaged the textbook writers extensively, but didn’t actually manage to articulate what was wrong with their methods. Or—more relevant to the clicker quiz—what his proposed solutions were.

When the quiz rolled around, Charles hoped, _hoped_ that Adams would give them a break because they had barely covered a thing on it, but he just wordlessly started going through the questions. Charles got two out of five wrong which was absolutely unacceptable.

Rage clouded Charles’s judgement and he didn’t even realize he’d tailed Erik out of the building until they entered the dining hall. “Hungry?” Erik asked nonchalantly when he noticed Charles behind him.

“What the fuck is your problem?” Charles exploded.

Erik pondered this for a second. “Well, right now my problem is that I’m hungry. Which is why I’m in the dining hall.”

Charles closed the distance between them. He wanted to glare at the bastard eye-to-eye, but Erik just looked down at him in unmasked amusement. “You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

Erik shrugged.

Neither of them had moved so Charles realized that he was standing inches away from Erik. He felt angry and awkward and he didn’t want to take a step back because that would make him look like a wimp. “Do you want to fail or something? Do you want _everybody_ to fail?” he blustered, trying not to blush because he was standing very very close to an attractive guy.

“Nerd.”

“ _Argh!_ ” A few people awkwardly edged around them because they were standing pretty much in front of the door.

Erik frowned. “Calm down, bro. It’s just a stupid class.”

“A stupid class that still factors into my GPA! I’m not going to sacrifice a 4.0 because you’re an arrogant dick!”

Erik stepped back. Except when he did it, it didn’t look like he was conceding. It looked like he was giving the crazy guy some space, which was totally unfair. “It’s our first week of college. Why are you talking about 4.0s.”

“Because I intend to _get one,_ ” Charles practically growled.

“Okay. It’s clear that you’re mad. How about we get out of the doorway and continue this talk over coffee? Or tea? That’s what you British people drink, right?”

Charles sighed. “Sure. I’m in no mood to do homework right now anyway.”

“Homework?” Erik said incredulously and Charles barely managed to suppress the urge to shove him into a wall.

“Homework,” Charles said evenly.

As they walked towards the coffee station, Erik asked, “What, like astrophysics or some shit?”

“Astrophysics?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. You seem like one of those high-strung science types who drink your weight in caffeine and die of sleep deprivation.”

“High-strung science type?” God help him, Charles laughed.

“Dude, you basically assaulted me for asking stupid questions.”

That sort of was what had happened. He considered apologizing, but, “I’m still angry with you.”

Erik snorted. “Nerd.”

“Oh my god will you stop saying that? What’s your major? Probably something useless like philosophy, judging by your attitude.” They reached the coffee station and both selected the largest size of styrofoam cup. Charles watched Erik add just a teeny bit of milk and sugar, barely enough to change the color of the coffee.

“Political science, actually,” Erik said as Charles picked up the milk container.

“Like I said. Something useless.” As Erik reached for a lid, his elbow bumped into Charles’s arm, causing him to spill milk all over the table. “Really?!”

Erik smirked, but helped Charles clean up anyway.

They paid for their drinks and found a table. “So what’s your major?” Erik asked Charles as they sat down.

Charles took a sip of coffee. It burned his tongue a little, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to let Erik see him grimace. “I’m still figuring it out. Officially it’s bio because genetics have always fascinated me, but others fields of science are also really interesting. I’ll probably end up double majoring with a few minors.”

“Damn,” Erik said. “That’s a lot of credits. I was joking earlier when I mentioned dying of sleep deprivation but please don’t actually die of sleep deprivation.”

Charles shrugged. “It’s going to be hard, but at least I have a head start. Last year and over the summer I got some of my intro courses out of the way.” He bit the lid of his coffee cup as his jaw tightened. “Except Introduction to Scientific Problem-Solving.”

“That sucks. I’d say I’m sorry for being a dick, but I’m really not sorry. I can’t stand listening to that idiot ramble. It’s more entertaining to see how much I can make fun of him before he notices.”

“But the clicker questions!” Charles despaired, annoyance resurfacing.

Erik grinned. Charles wasn’t sure if he had a smile that didn’t look predatory, but this one gave his eyebrows a bit of a conspiratorial tilt. (Damn, those eyes were blue). “It’s actually not that bad if you do a little problem-solving of your own.”

“What do you mean?”

“Give me a minute to savor the fact that I’ve outsmarted a genius science nerd.” He leaned back in his chair, took a self-satisfied sip of coffee while Charles waited in caffeine-fueled impatience.

“You know how he always talks about how he’s so _different_ from the people who wrote the textbook?” He paused, clearly enjoying the fact that Charles was hanging on his every word. “Dude’s got a superiority complex so big he doesn’t realize that he’s saying the exact same thing, just with extremely vague fancy words. Read the textbook and you’ll be golden.”

“That’s—actually really helpful. Thanks, Erik.”

He smirked, holding out a hand. “Erik Lehnsherr.”

Charles shook it, laughing. “Charles Xavier.”

“Nice to meet you, Charles.”


End file.
